There were 141 officers and men serving in HMS Venomous on 23 May 1940, the day when Venomous
and her sister ships brought the Guards back from Boulogne, and 29 of
them were stokers. Chief Stoker Charles Baden Weekes DSM (K.54729),
Chief Petty Officer, was born at Kingsbridge, Devon,
in 1900 and died at Bodmin, Cornwall, in 1984. He joined as a boy
sailor, signed on for 12 years when he
was 18 and was recalled at the outbreak of war. There were four
Leading Stokers, fourteen 1st Class Stokers and two 2nd Class Stokers.
Chief PO Stoker Charles Baden Weekes DSM (K.54729) was one of two stokers who joined Venomous in
1939 and were still aboard when she decommissioned at the end of the
war. His award of the DSM was announced in the January 1943 issue of the London
Gazette but it was presented to him much later by King George VI on 16 May 1944 while Venomous was being converted into an Air Target Ship at Falmouth. He married a girl from Scotland, Agnes Stead, before the war and
had two sons but both are now dead and I was contacted by his grand
daughter in September 2020 and she sent me a scan of his service
certificate and a few photographs.
The other stokers who joined Venomous in 1939 were Thomas Henry Poole, Stanley Bibbings and Herbert Edgar Bartlett. Thomas Henry Poole was
born at Tiverton, Devon, in 1899, joined the Navy as a boy sailor on 2
June 1915 and was a boy signalman in HMS Revenge
at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. When he was 18 in December 1917 he
signed on for 12 years. He served in Venomous with Chief Stoker Charles Baden Weekes until the end of the war.
Stanley Bibbings, like Thomas Poole, was a Reservist when he joined HMS Venomous as a Stoker 1st Class (K.62202) on 31 July 1939. After leaving Venomous he becme Chief Stoker on the Illustrious Class Aircraft Carrier, HMS Victorious which took part in Operation Pedestal, the relief of Malta. The wartime memories of Stanley Philip Bibbings were sent to me by his son, Ken Bibbings, but it was his grandson who first contacted me. He died two weeks before his 101st birthday.
Herbert Edgar Bartlett (K30965) served in HMS Venomous
from April 1939 until October 1943 as a Stoker 1st Class. He was born
at Corsham in Wiltshire in August 1894 and he gave his trade as a stone
sawyer in a quarry when he joined the Navy and signed on for 12
years in 1916. I was sent a "staged" studio photograph of him wearing
the cap of his first ship, HMS Hydrangea, by his
Grandson, Paul Atkins, in May 2020. All the ships in
which he served are recorded on his service certificate. His postings
were usually short, sometimes only a few months, but its worth
mentioning the sixteen months he spent on the V & W Class Leader
HMS Mackay in 1929-31, his two years in the C Class destroyer HMS Cygnet and the twenty months in HMS Glorious,
a former Battleship converted into an aircraft carrier which was sunk
during the Norway campaign in 1940 with the loss of 1,200 lives.
He was pensioned out of the Navy in February 1938 only to be recalled seven months later on 28 September 1938 to join HMS Venomous when she came out of Reserve. Sadly, he left no wriitten record of his wartime service in Venomous or any photographs. He married before the war and had two children, a boy and a girl. When he left HMS Venomous in October 1943 he was posted to HMS Dipper, at RNAS Henstridge, west of Shafterbury in Dorset. He left the Navy in 1945 and returned to his old job at the stone quarry in Corsham. When his wife caught TB and had to go into a home he brought the two children up himself while working at the stone quarry. He was 58 when he was killed in a motor bike accident in 1952. Paul Atkins bought three copies of A Hard Fought Ship (2017) so that he and his brother and their Mother could read about their grandfather's time during the most exciting years of the war in HMS Venomous.
 Chief Stoker Charles Baden Weekes (1900-84)
Wearing the DSM presented to him by King George VI |
 Thomas Henry Poole (1899-1987)
After the Battle of Jutland (1916) in which he served on HMS Revenge |
 |
 Herbert Edgar Bartlett (1894-1952)
A studio photograph with the cap tally of HMS Hydrangea (1916-7) |
Venomous
was recommissioned three times after major refits requiring long
periods in naval dockyards, the officers were given new appointments
and the men returned to barracks for assignment to other ships.
It was usual to retain a few experienced men to join the new commission
but very rare for a man to remain with a ship throughout his service. Venomous
was known to have problems with her engines and perhaps that explains
why two of the long serving reservist stokers remained aboard
throughout her wartime service. Stanley Bibbings left Venomous in June 1940 and became "Chief Stoker" on HMS Victorius but continued to suffer from the back problems caused by the collision with the paddle tug Swarthy.
Thomas "Yorkie" Russell joined Venomous in April 1945 as a 1st Class Stoker when my father, Lt(E) William Redvers Forster RNR was "Chief".
